Category: LGBTQ

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Five News Stories

Fairfax High School elected a male student Prom Queen.

Tom Ackerman, a gay man, has vowed to call his friends’ wives their girlfriends, because he’s decided his religious views don’t allow him to recognize opposite-sex marriage.

The New Scientist tells you everything you ever wanted to know about female ejaculation (& maybe a few things you didn’t want to know).

A woman named Brenda Lee got dragged bodily off of Air Force One when she tried to give President Obama a letter asking him to stand up for heterosexual marriage.

Publishers Weekly reports from the BEA that US Publishers have vowed to fight digitized piracy.

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NYS Same Sex Senate Vote

Fivethirtyeight.com has done a breakdown of the possible same sex marriage vote for the NY Senate. Basically, there are probably 20 definites, & then a bunch of solid Nos, & then a bunch of undecideds. If your rep is on this list, CALL HIM OR HER RIGHT AWAY.

Even if these people aren’t your reps, you should call them & tell them to vote YES & stop embarassing the good residents of NYS by being so ass-backwards, already.


UNDECIDED, LEANING YES (1)
55. James Alesi, R-Upstate (East Rochester) link

UNDECIDED OR UNKNOWN (11)
1. Kenneth LaValle, R-Long Island (Port Jefferson) link
2. John J. Flanagan, R-Long Island (East Northport) link
3. Brian X. Foley, D-Long Island (Blue Point) link
4. Owen H. Johnson, R-Long Island (West Babylon) link
8. Charles Fuschillo, R-Long Island (Merrick) link
13. Hiram Monserrate, D-NYC (Jackson Heights) link
15. Joseph Addabbo, Jr., D-NYC (Ozone Park) link
19. John Sampson, D-NYC (Brooklyn) link
27. Carl Kruger, D-NYC (Brooklyn) link
36. Ruth Hassell-Thompson, D-Westchester (Williamsbridge) link
40. Vincent Leibell, R-Westchester (Patterson) link

UNDECIDED, LEANING NO (5)
6. Kemp Hannon, R-Long Island (Garden City) link
24. Andrew Lanza, R-NYC (Staten Island) link
45. Betty Little, R-Upstate (Queensbury) (conflicting reports suggest opposition and that she’s ‘within reach’)
49. David Valesky, D-Upstate (Oneida) (officially undecided; constituent e-mail hints at opposition)
57. Catharine Young, R-Upstate (Olean) link

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“Straight-Acting”

The article itself is kind of teh suck, but the comments are interesting.
A young boy who acts in a feminine way isn’t a faggot; he’s a sissy.

Still, it’s interesting to see a conversation about male genders from another community’s POV.

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Public About-Face

Senator Tom Harken (D- IA) has come around to accepting civil marriage equality, according to Pam’s House Blend.

I think it took courage to admit, as he did, that he was wrong when he signed onto DOMA:

“We all grow as we get older, and we learn things and we become more sensitive to people and people’s lives,” Harkin said. “And the more I’ve looked at that, I’ve grown to think differently about how people – how we should live. And I guess I’m at the point that, you know – I’m to that point of live and let live,” Harkin said.

Amazingly enough, DOMA was 13 years ago, & while many were optimistic then that we could turn the tide, I’m not sure any of us expected how quickly we would.

You can thank Sen. Tom Harkin via his website.

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LGBT Parents’ Survey

A couple of students here at Lawrence are conducting a survey of LGBT families in the US, and would like the help of anyone (parents and children) who would like to give their perspective. I’ve attached the message from the students, who are seniors working on their honors project. Their work is being supervised by two friends and colleagues–Beth Haines who is the current head of Gender Studies and Julie Konik, who has a visiting position in psychology.

The website for the survey is www.lgbtparents.org

To LGBT parents:

We would like to explore the experiences and perspectives of LGBT parents in a wide range of communities in the United States. In particular, we are interested in your views on the unique set of challenges that families with same-sex parents may face as a result of social policies and attitudes, and how they may overcome or manage these challenges.

Our research team consists of Beth Haines (who specializes in child development and gender studies) and Julie Konik (who specializes in personality and LGBT studies). In addition, Katy Fohrman and Kim Vachon are senior psychology majors at Lawrence University. We all feel strongly about being advocates for the LGBT community, which is why we have chosen to pursue research in this particular area. With this research, we hope to better understand challenges facing LGBT families and promote social policies that support all families.

If you would like to learn more about us, please check out our website:

www.lgbtparents.org

We have developed a survey that explores the ways in which same-sex parents and their children manage social pressures within their communities. The survey will take approximately 30 minutes to complete. We want to learn about your individual perspectives, experiences, and opinions. Parents will be asked questions about topics such as attitudes in your community, parenting and family dynamics, social pressures and sources of support, as well as questions regarding your child(ren). We also invite your child(ren) under 21 years old to complete questions about themselves and their relationship with their parents, as well as optional questions about their perceptions of the community. Of course, whether your child(ren) complete questions is entirely up to you–you will have the option to give consent for whatever you feel comfortable with for your child(ren).

If you are interested in participating in our survey, please go to our website: www.lgbtparents.org We truly appreciate your help!

Please feel free to email us at survey@lgbtparents.org or our individual emails (hainesb@lawrence.edu; konikj@lawrence.edu) if you have any technical trouble, questions, or comments.

Thanks again for your help!

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Femmes

I’m not one & I don’t understand them, somehow like a teenager who doesn’t understand the boys or girls he ogles. They are a mystery: a perfect, empowered, complicated mystery.

I have had, like so many tomboys and masculine spectrum and androgyny-leaning and genderqueer sorts, the kind of frustration with femininity that is about me & about the world & its expectations, but one day while listening to a femme talk about intentionally trying to look like a dyke so that others would know she wanted to date women, I had one of those revelatory moments. I explained why I was smiling to her: that I had experienced the reverse, trying to fem up my naturally dyke-spectrum gender even though i wanted to date men. We both had a moment of why is this shit so absurdly stupid along with a little and why are there always uniforms and prescriptions that go along with desire?

I don’t know the answer but I do know I have mocked femininity like the injured tomboy I can be, but this book – so full of longing and coolness and love and desire and girlness and attitude that I feel once again something like that teenaged boi or grrl utterly confounded but this time, a little in awe.

This book Visible: A Femmethology Parts 1 & 2, edited by Jennifer Clarke Burke and published by Homofactus, is full of the narratives of the people who call themselves femmes, and they ponder such a range of questions: the obvious ones about invisibility and identity – especially relevant to readers here when that (in)visibility relates to having a trans-masculine partner — to the femininity of a self-confessed “stopped pretending to be a male to queer to femme female” trans person. They are full of gender theory, concerned about community, biphobia, butch-femme dynamics and too many other things to mention. It gives me hope that even I, one day, can overcome being a jerk and punching those girls I like in the arm instead of just telling them how awesome & fabulous they are.

Thanks femmes, for making me look again at femininity. You can read more at www.Femmethology.com.